What does 'ability grouping' mean for Kittery's students?

Shift to begin with emphasis on advanced learners

KITTERY, Maine — A significant educational shift is happening at Shapleigh Middle School right now — one that could eventually spell the end of grade levels as school officials work to redefine a competent student.

Comment

By Deborah McDermott

seacoastonline.com

By Deborah McDermott

Posted Mar. 24, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By Deborah McDermott

Posted Mar. 24, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

KITTERY, Maine — A significant educational shift is happening at Shapleigh Middle School right now — one that could eventually spell the end of grade levels as school officials work to redefine a competent student.

Today, it begins with more emphasis placed on gifted and talented children; tomorrow, it means each teacher will challenge all children by providing differing instruction and tests based on ability.

This shift toward "differentiated" or "ability grouping" education is at least in part the reason given by Principal Wanda Avery for leaving. But it has the wholehearted support of the School Committee chairman and the president of the K-8 Kittery Parent Teacher Association. It is a trend in middle school education likely to become more commonplace nationwide, according to a recent study by the national think tank The Brookings Institution.

"The differentiation approach has been around for a while, and every classroom teacher aspires to it," said Superintendent Allyn Hutton. "You want to push all kids beyond their comfort zones."

The typical middle school approach to education has been a "heterogeneous" one — where children of all ability levels are in the same classroom and taught the same material at the same pace.

In ability grouping, the students are still all in the same classroom with the same teacher, but are grouped and taught according to their ability — sometimes even with different books and with different tests.

This method is different than "tracking," in which students are put in classrooms with others of the same ability. A typical example of tracking is Advanced Placement courses in high school.

"The fact is, ability grouping has been around for 100 years," said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and author of the institution's annual report on American education. "These are age-old questions in schools, though. How do you take a large group of individuals and tailor instruction that is as efficient and fair as possible."

Loveless' research shows a marked increase in both ability grouping and tracking in American schools in the past decade — but particularly ability grouping.

He tracks the increase to several factors. As "accountability systems" were established like No Child Left Behind standards and standardized tests, "there became an incentive to boost kids' achievement." Schools had a desire to look good on test scores, which could determine federal funding and also became a bellwether for parents.

Another factor, he said, is technology. There are online resources available now "for giving a fairly quick assessment of where kids are deficient, and teachers can tailor a remedial curriculum to meet those needs."

Perhaps most important, the "stigma" argument — that educators are going to adversely brand children if they are not top achievers — "has been removed."

While he said he's not sure why, he believes the stigma argument "was never based on good research to begin with. The argument of the critics is that we always need to treat all kids the same. But the fact is there's nothing wrong with singling out kids and giving them something different."

It's a system that has worked well at the Cooperative Middle School in Stratham, N.H., said former Exeter Region Cooperative School Board member Patty Lovejoy. The school adopted the differentiated learning model years ago, "and we're to the point where we were number one in the state in proficient or above proficient in reading last year," Lovejoy said.

In the early 2000s, the Cooperative School Board moved to tracking middle school students by placing them in homogeneous classrooms based on ability. The shift followed considerable and intense community debate before the change and the board quickly moved away from that model.

Hutton said Shapleigh Middle School is working toward ability grouping of students, but is not there yet. The first step is to offer instruction for gifted and talented students, she said. An instructor is at Shapleigh one day a week this year and will be there two days next year under the proposed fiscal year 2014 budget.

In addition to teaching students, she is also training teachers "how to imbed differentiated instruction in the classroom."

She called it a challenge for teachers to teach to the needs and abilities of all the students in his or her classroom, "but that is the ideal approach."

She said gifted and talented "was a necessary first step because our top performing students are lacking the challenge they need to grow. When you have above-average students who are bored, you can lose them early on and it's hard to get them back."

She said "from the first day I arrived" in Kittery parents told her there needed to be more emphasis in the middle school toward reaching all students.

School Committee Chairman Ken Lemont knows firsthand about bored high achievers. He said both his now-adult children were rarely challenged when they attended Shapleigh.

"They found in a lot of areas they needed to be challenged and they weren't," he said.

He said he thinks all children should be challenged at their own level, so "we don't bring the top down, we bring the bottom up."

The effort toward ability grouping has the support of Bethany McEllin, president of the Kittery K-8 Parent Teacher Association. "Regardless of what level that child is capable of, they're being challenged to learn to the best of their capability," she said. "That's what every teacher at Shapleigh should be striving for."

She said she believes most parents are "very supportive" of the move toward ability grouping. "Anything that promotes increased learning for students is being supported. Saying it's good enough is not OK," she said.

Hutton foresees a day when grade levels themselves are considered inconsequential. If a fifth-grade student is competent to study seventh-grade math, he or she should do so, she said. By the same token, if that fifth-grader has shown proficiency in most fifth-grade math concepts but not all, he or she should be given the help to master those concepts.

"We need to break down the structural barriers and place students where they are going to be challenged," she said.

Traip Academy is moving toward that model over the next three to four years, and Hutton sees no reason why particularly seventh- and eighth-graders should not follow in the high schoolers' footsteps.

As for the argument that the ability grouping model could stigmatize children, Hutton was philosophical.

"The fact is, if kids get moved ahead and they're not ready, that's not fair to anybody. It snowballs and catches up with them and they become unsuccessful students," she said, just as brighter students can also become unsuccessful. "What we need to do is make sure every one of our children is appropriately challenged."